


An Invite to Lads Night

by SqutternutBosh



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Big Finish: Rhys and Ianto's Excellent Barbecue, F/M, Gwen and Ianto friendship, M/M, One Shot, References to Suicide, Spoilers for that audio!, references to character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27802417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SqutternutBosh/pseuds/SqutternutBosh
Summary: After everything that happened with Daf, Gwen's worried about Rhys. A chat with Ianto makes her realise he could be just the person to help.Spoilers for Rhys and Ianto's Excellent Barbecue.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams, background Jack/Ianto
Comments: 15
Kudos: 37





	An Invite to Lads Night

**Author's Note:**

> I love a bit of Gwen/ Ianto friendship and was curious about how Gwen asked Ianto to go to the lads night and try and get Rhys talking, and this is where that thought took me - enjoy!

According to the count Ianto hadn’t realised he’d been keeping, he’s just caught Gwen staring off into the distance for the fourth time that day. He hadn’t thought much of it the first few times, it was a quiet day by Torchwood standards and Gwen hasn’t left her desk much, but this time she’s sat on the sofa having her lunch, a forkful of yesterday’s Chinese hovering just above the container.

‘Gwen?’ he asks. Nothing.

Ianto drops down beside her on the sofa, the movement rocking Gwen out of her reverie. She blinks.

‘Oh, Ianto,’ she says mechanically.

‘You alright?’

She sets the fork back down in the container.

‘Just thinking about Rhys.’

‘Imagining him standing there in the distance or…?’ Ianto says, tilting his head in the direction of the empty spot Gwen had been staring out into, somewhere just to the left of the water tower.

‘He’s having a “lads night”,’ she air quotes with her free hand, ‘tonight. Getting the barbecue out, few beers and that.’

‘That does sound like it needs a lot of thought from you then.’

Gwen sets her food down on the coffee table and gives Ianto a look.

‘It’s not about that, it’s… Everything with Daf, y’know?’

Ianto does know. He remembers Gwen dashing out of the Hub still on the phone to Rhys after the call came in. She’d left in such a blind panic that she’d had to rush back in again for her keys, all the while on the phone to Rhys, soothing him and telling him she’d be there soon.

‘He says tonight’s going to be just him and the boys,’ she continues, ‘like they do when they get a chance, like nothing’s happened and one of his oldest mates is still going to show up. Like he can’t acknowledge that Daf’s gone.’

Ianto studies his hands in his lap. He adjusts one of his cufflinks.

‘Yes, well… We know what that’s like, don’t we?’ he says, still focusing on the cufflink. He can’t get it to sit straight, it keeps twisting out of line with the cuff of his sleeve. If he were to look up now, he’d be looking right at the photo of Owen and Tosh that Gwen keeps clipped to her workstation.

Gwen knows exactly what he’s talking about. She smiles softly, sadly.

‘I still turn around in my chair to ask Tosh for help when my computer’s playing up, or when I’m looking at something that I know she could piece together in seconds but is going to take me hours,’ she says. ‘When I’m looking at my screen, it’s like I can pretend she’s still there. Pretend Owen’s just playing with some bit of an alien down in the Med Bay. If I don’t look around me, it’s like nothing’s changed. Except…’

‘Except it has,’ says Ianto. ‘I have to remind myself sometimes. Some mornings I still make coffee for five.’

Ianto looks up from his hands and out around the Hub. For such a large space, it can be so quiet sometimes, so still. Some days now, it feels like there’s just the constant whisper of water sluicing down the Rift manipulator and that’s it. He never used to mind spending time alone here but now it makes his skin crawl. There used to be so much more life in here.

‘It can be so quiet without them,’ he murmurs.

‘Especially Owen,’ Gwen adds.

‘Especially Owen,’ Ianto agrees.

‘Tosh was never noisy but,’ a smile breaks across Gwen’s face as she speaks, ‘she would talk to herself when she was working on something. Not very loud, but it’d be there, this stream of words when she was really focused. Did you ever notice that?’

Ianto laughs. ‘Yeah. She’d talk to the mainframe a lot too, said it would treat us well if we were nice to it.’

Gwen chuckles. ‘Oh God, yeah. I never did understand her explanation of how the thing had come to be semi-sentient either, whatever semi-sentient means.’

Ianto could try and explain but he knows now’s not the time. Gwen shifts her position and Ianto knows she’s searching out the photo of their two colleagues. Her eyes are glistening, something Ianto has become all too familiar with. A lump in his own throat is making it hard to breathe. He slots a finger behind the knot of his tie and loosens it.

‘I miss them,’ she says.

‘Me too. Even Owen.’

Gwen lets out a watery giggle and rubs her sleeve over her eyes, wiping away the tears, leaving her eyelids red from the friction.

‘See, this is good, isn’t it? I mean, shit, really phenomenally shit, but good,’ she says. ‘I’d go mad if I didn’t have you and Jack to talk to about them, to remember them and to talk about what happened. How else is the human brain supposed to handle that kind of sudden… absence? That sudden hole where someone used to be that’s now just memories?’

Ianto clears his throat, not sure where this is going.

‘We can talk about them whenever you want, Gwen,’ he says. ‘You know I’m always here.’

‘I know. You’re good like that, Ianto, you’re someone I can talk to about all this. Rhys needs that.’

Ianto nods. He knows what it’s like to bottle those feelings up, to feel like there’s no one in the world to talk to about the pain and sadness that surrounds you, and it can only lead to dark places.

‘Hang on…’ Gwen starts, something dawning on her. ‘Ianto. Could you do the same for Rhys? Talk to him, and let him talk like you do for me?’

Ianto’s not sure what to say to this other than, ‘What?’

Gwen’s words are gaining speed now, she’s running headlong into this new idea of hers.

‘Seriously, go to his lads night tonight, tell him I said you were invited. See if you can get him talking, get him opening up.’

‘Oh, Gwen, I don’t know-,’

‘Listen, hear me out, we used to use tactics like this in the police all the time. Get someone in there, not a total stranger, but someone they don’t know well. Start chatting. It’s amazing what things people will let out when the conversation goes the right way, things they’d never say to people they’re close to.’

‘I get the _logic_ of it,’ Ianto protests, ‘but seriously, you want to send me in there to Rhys’s “lads night”?’

He mirrors the air quotes Gwen had previously used.

‘You’re a lad, aren’t you?’ she says delicately.

Ianto raises an eyebrow. He remembers Rhys’s mates from the wedding and they’re not exactly the type of crowd he would naturally gravitate towards.

‘Yes,’ he says flatly. ‘Lads lads lads.’

‘You’re right,’ says Gwen, scooting closer to Ianto on the sofa. ‘You’re not a lad at all, not one of the boys. That’s why this will work.’

‘You really think it will?’

‘I’ve seen you do it, Ianto. You get to know people, you ask the right questions. You empathise with people who are hurting and that’s what Rhys is right now, he’s hurting, and I just can’t get him to admit it.’

Ianto sighs.

‘I’m really worried about him, Ianto,’ Gwen says after he doesn’t reply. ‘Especially after what happened with Daf, no one saw that coming. Do it for me?’

She leans in closer and Ianto knows she’s trying to trap him with her big, irrefusable doe-eyes. He throws his hands up in surrender.

‘Alright, alright, fine. I’ll do it for you. And for Rhys, he’s a good bloke.’

Gwen grabs one of the hands he’s holding up and squeezes it as if making a deal.

‘You’re a gem. I owe you one.’

‘You definitely do. Not for helping Rhys, I’ll do that for free, but because you’re forcing me into spending an evening with Banana Boat.’

‘I’ll cover a night for you and Jack,’ she says. ‘He can take you to that French place he keeps promising you. Deal?’

Ianto squeezes her hand and releases it.

‘Deal.’

He gets to his feet. He’s getting hungry – he knew he shouldn’t have let Jack go to pick up lunch, he always gets side-tracked.

‘What does one take to a lads night, anyway?’ he asks, looking back down at Gwen, who’s returned to eating her lunch.

‘Don’t worry about it, they’ve got loads of beer and Rhys bought enough sausages to feed a particularly starving army,’ she says through a mouthful of chow mein.

‘My mother always taught me to never show up to a party empty-handed.’

Ianto checks his watch and ponders what he can get at short notice. An idea comes to him and he claps his hands together.

‘Jack has, for whatever reason, this mini croquet set. Think maybe people will be up for a few games?’ he asks.

Gwen smirks at him from over the top of her takeaway container.

‘Oh, Ianto,’ she says, ‘you’re going to fit right in. Lads lads lads.’


End file.
